1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer systems and networks. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for merging static data with dynamic data from the same web page of a website on the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Web servers on the Internet provide websites that have graphic web pages, typically implemented in hypertext mark-up language (HTML), which are accessible to user computers that are in connection to the Internet. A user computer uses a xe2x80x9cbrowserxe2x80x9d program that allows the user to download the web display the web pages on the user computer to the user. The web pages can have static data that remains unchanged, such as in a background, and dynamic data which changes on the web page, such as stock quotes or weather. In typical database-driven/data-focused web page applications on the Internet, 50-70% of the web page content is static information.
When the combined static and dynamic data of the web page is downloaded, the dynamic data must periodically be xe2x80x9crefreshed,xe2x80x9d or reloaded, on the downloaded web page to accurately reflect any changed data. In order to view a web page that has both static and dynamic data, a browser must constantly download the web page data and update the already downloaded web page. One method of refreshing the web page on the browser is to include a xe2x80x9crefresh metatagxe2x80x9d in the web page that instructs the browser to update the web page at a predetermined time interval. This method, however, must be provided by the web site host and cannot be controlled by the user computer.
For the user computer to control refreshing of the downloaded web page, a conventional browser can simply reload the entire web page once the dynamic data is requested to be refreshed, but this total reload is slow and takes significant system resources. Some browsers attempt to increase efficiency through the use of a caching scheme to store the entire mixed-data HTML web page when the web page is downloaded to the browser. When the web page is desired to be refreshed, the browser downloads the entire web page again, except for the image files used in the web page that are already in the cache, and updates the web page on the user computer. However, both of the above methods do not discriminate between the static and dynamic data of the website for purposes of updating the web page downloaded on to the browser. Accordingly, the present invention is primarily directed at providing an improved system and method for merging static data and dynamic data on the browser of the user computer.